Project Talent

Project
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377,000 students. 1,300 schools. In 1960, AIR launched Project Talent, the largest and most comprehensive study of high school students ever conducted in the United States. Now, as the original study participants move into retirement, Project Talent has become a promising resource for understanding the aging process.

Created by AIR’s founder, John Flanagan, and funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the study assessed a broad cross-section of the American high school population. Students participated in a two-day battery of tests and questionnaires covering aptitude, abilities, interests, and individual and family characteristics. Until 1974, the study followed these students, collecting new data at one, five, and eleven years after their expected high school graduation date.

The purpose of the study was to (1) create a national inventory of human resources and talent, (2) better understand the processes by which young people choose and advance their careers, and (3) discern which experiences and influences are the most important in preparing students for their future.

Today, Project Talent is being developed as a resource on aging and the life course and offers the ability to study special populations including twins, veterans, and racial/ethnic groups. The existing data are being used to address questions about early life predictors of mortality and resilience, and sources of variation in intellectual abilities and achievements associated with schools, families, and biological mechanisms. A pilot study conducted in 2011-12 demonstrated the feasibility of locating and engaging the original participants whose last point of contact may have been more than 50 years ago.

AIR’s work on Project Talent has included the following:

  • Launching a major study of Project Talent’s twins and their siblings in order to develop the country’s first nationally-representative twins and siblings database (see below for more information)
  • Modernizing the Project Talent data and data documentation and working to make the data more accessible to researchers
  • Locating, tracking, and reengaging study participants
  • Designing sampling and data collection plans and analyzing the impact of methodological procedures
  • Presenting and publishing methodological research
  • Designing follow-up studies of the entire 1960 cohort to examine factors affecting resilience and aging
Project Talent website

Related Work

23 Oct 2014
Spotlight

Project Talent Data Available to Researchers

In 1960, AIR launched Project Talent, the largest and most comprehensive study of high school students ever conducted in the United States. Project Talent data are now available to researchers through the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging. AIR survey methodologists worked with University of Michigan colleagues to prepare the data and documentation for preservation, enhancement, and dissemination. The team transformed the data from a large number of files on 9-track tapes to a data file for each high school grade, documenting the data and creating tools to facilitate its use.
Topic: 
Aging
16 Oct 2014
Photo Gallery

PICTURE THIS: Project Talent

Images tell a story: Project Talent taps into an enormous database to reveal insights, trends, and opportunities for further research on early Baby Boomers’ life course.
Topic: 
Aging
25 Sep 2014
Commentary

The Really Long Shadow—Studying the Lifelong Impacts of Early Life Experience

Learning more about the lifelong shadow of early life experiences is a challenge that can’t be met without longitudinal data. AIR and the University of Southern California are mining Project Talent's data to identify risk and protective factors for differential outcomes at older ages, to learn about the life trajectories of the baby-boom generation, and to align public policy and programs with research evidence and real-world opportunities and needs.
Topic: 
Health and Wellness Across the Lifespan, Aging
11 Jul 2014
Report

Locating Study Respondents After 50 Years

Many longitudinal and follow-up studies face a common challenge in locating participants over time. The 2011–12 Project Talent Follow-up Pilot Study examined the extent to which a geographically dispersed subsample of participants can be located again after decades with no contact, using relatively low-cost methods.
Topic: 
Aging
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